SUMMARY
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Summary from Goodreads.
REVIEW
I’m slowly making my way through my Emily Henry backlog and Beach Read was next on my list. One of the reasons I finally decided to pick it up now is because the movie adaptation is currently in production and I always love reading the book before watching the film. Emily Henry has quickly become one of those authors I know I can rely on for heartfelt contemporary romances, so I went into this one with pretty high expectations.
Thankfully, it didn’t disappoint.
One of my favourite things about Emily Henry’s books is just how effortless they are to read. Her writing has this conversational quality that makes it feel like you’re sitting down with a friend who’s telling you a story. It’s witty without trying too hard, emotional without becoming overly dramatic and filled with little observations about life that feel incredibly relatable. More than once I found myself stopping because a sentence captured a feeling so perfectly that it felt like it had been pulled straight from real life.
At its heart, Beach Read is so much more than a romance. Yes it has all the chemistry, banter and tension you’d expect from an enemies to lovers story, but it’s also about grief, expectations, family, forgiveness and learning that life rarely turns out the way you imagined it would. Emily Henry has a way of weaving these heavier themes into her romances without ever making them feel overwhelming and I think that’s what makes her books stand out for me.
January and Augustus were such easy characters to become invested in.
January has built her career writing optimistic romance novels and believing that love always finds a way. But after everything that’s happened in her personal life, she’s struggling to believe in the stories she’s spent years writing. Watching her confidence slowly unravel made her feel incredibly real. She’s funny, vulnerable, stubborn and trying to make sense of a world that suddenly doesn’t look the way she thought it did. I found myself rooting for her from the very beginning.
Then there’s Augustus.
It’s impossible not to love Gus. He’s thoughtful, quietly funny, emotionally intelligent and so much more complex than his reputation suggests. I loved how Emily Henry slowly peeled back the layers of his character, revealing someone who has experienced his own disappointments and heartbreaks but still manages to care deeply about the people around him. He isn’t your typical romance hero and I think that’s exactly why he worked so well.
The relationship between January and Gus was easily my favourite part of the book.
Their history together creates this wonderful tension from the very beginning and I loved watching them move from rivals and reluctant neighbours into genuine friends before the romance really took hold. Their writing challenge where each agrees to spend the summer writing in the other’s genre, is such a clever premise because it forces them to spend time together while also encouraging them to step outside their comfort zones. Some of my favourite scenes were simply the two of them talking, teasing each other or slowly letting their guards down. The chemistry felt natural and the romance developed at a pace that made every emotional moment feel earned.
What I also appreciated was that neither of them “fixed” the other. Instead they helped each other confront the parts of themselves they’d been avoiding. Their relationship wasn’t about magically making life’s problems disappear, it was about finding someone willing to stand beside you while you worked through them. That made the romance feel incredibly mature and authentic.
The only reason this wasn’t quite a five star read for me is that there were a few sections in the middle where the pacing slowed slightly as the story focused more heavily on family dynamics and personal reflection. While those moments added emotional depth, I occasionally found myself wanting to get back to January and Gus together.
Overall, Beach Read reminded me why Emily Henry has become one of my favourite contemporary romance authors. Her writing is effortlessly engaging, her characters feel like real people and her romances always offer something more than just two people falling in love. January and Augustus were an absolute joy to spend time with and their enemies to lovers journey had me smiling from beginning to end. If this is any indication of what I still have left in Emily Henry’s backlist, I’m very excited to keep working my way through it and I’m even more excited to see how this story translates to the big screen.
-Rachelle
I’m on Instagram at @rachellesbookshelf
